Andrew Murrison: I am very pleased to hear that expression of confidence in this good Bill, which is being made better by the amendment tabled by the Government. I agree with my hon. Friend’s point.
I have already gone over my five minutes, Dame Eleanor, but it is important to note the extreme hardball attitude that the EU has recently adopted and what that says about what might be in store for us in the future. The points that the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) made about state aid are extremely germane to this. I remember well, as Northern Ireland Minister and Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the issues relating to Bombardier. It was plain as a pikestaff that this might be used in the event that the UK decided to support Bombardier in GB, because, as things stand, the EU would claim that it is unfair and unlawful because of Bombardier’s presence in Belfast. That is a clear and present danger.
It is also important to get real about what we are up against. I have every respect for the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who quite rightly expounded at length on the fact that the negotiation has to be bounded in good will and said that this will cause difficulty for us in Brussels, but I am clear that this negotiation is no love-in. It is a bare-knuckle affair. Pique is never far away, nor is the desire to make an example of an errant UK pour encourager les autres. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone said, international law is 40% law and 60% politics, as it is here—this is politics in the raw.
I am sorry that, throughout this whole torrid process, hon. and right hon. Members have shackled the UK Government in our negotiations in Brussels. The British public know that. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central shakes his head, but he should know that more than anybody else, because the British public spoke loud and clear on this issue in December. They understand what we often forget in this place, and they get this business in the way that many of us do not. His party needs to learn that lesson. That is why it suffered so badly in December.
Without amendment 66 or perhaps amendment 4, we would have a problem internally too, because we are up against the judiciary, which has shown itself to be perfectly capable of going head to head with the British Government. By bringing this matter back to the House, it will not be the British Government that the Supreme Court goes head to head with. It will be Parliament itself, and more than that—the people of this country.  Amendment 66 will give certainty on both sides of the English channel. It makes a good Bill better. It assures and ensures our national interests, and I wish it well.